MAVROCORDAT

MAVROCORDATO  Or MAVROGORDATO, the name of a family of Phanariot Greeks, distinguished in the history of Turkey, Rumania and modern Greece . The family was founded by a merchant of Chios, whose son Alexander Mavrocordato (c . 1636–1709), a doctor of philosophy and medicine of Bologna, became dragoman to the sultan in 1673, and was much employed in negotiations with Austria . It was he who drew up the treaty of Karlowitz (1699) . He became a secretary of state, and was created a count of the Holy Roman Empire . His authority, with that of Hussein Kupruli and Rami Pasha, was supreme at the court of Mustapha II., and he didmuch to ameliorate the condition of the Christians in Turkey . He was disgraced in 1703, but was recalled to court by Sultan Ahmed III . He left some historical, grammatical, &c. treatises of little value . His son NICHOLAS MAVROCORDATO (1670–1730) was grand dragoman to the Divan (1697), and in 1708 was appointed hospodar (prince) of Moldavia . Deposed, owing to the sultan's suspicions, in favour of Demetrius Cantacuzene, he was restored in 1711, and soon afterwards became hospodar of Walachia . In 1716 he was deposed by the Austrians, but was restored after the peace of Passarowitz . He was the first Greek set to rule the Danubian principalities, and was responsible for establishing the system which for a hundred years was to make the name of Greek hateful to the Rumanians .

He introduced Greek

manners, the Greek language and Greek costume, and set up a splendid court on the Byzantine model . For the rest he was a man of enlightenment, founded libraries and was himself the author of a curious work entitled IIepi KaOiiKOVTwv (Bucharest, 1719) . He was succeeded as grand dragoman (1709) by his son John (Ioannes), who was for a short while hospodar of Moldavia, and died in 1720 . Nicholas Mavrocordato was succeeded as prince of Walachia in 1730 by his son Constantine . He was deprived in the same year, but again ruled the principality from 1735 to 1741 and from 1744 to 1748; he was prince of Moldavia from 1741 to 1744 and from 1748 to 1749 . His rule was distinguished by numerous tentative reforms in the fiscal and administrative systems . He was wounded and taken prisoner in the affair of Galati during the Russo-Turkish War, on the 5th of November 1769, and died in captivity .